This exhibit seeks to explore the phenomenon of “rioting” as resistance to police brutality and racial oppression by focusing on some major outbreaks of violence in the last several decades of United States history. The events of focus are the Watts Uprising of 1965, the Los Angeles Uprising of 1992, the protests surrounding Oscar Grant’s death in Oakland in 2009, and the current protests in Ferguson. In looking at these events and comparing them to each other, this exhibit seeks to change how Watts and Los Angeles are viewed in the traditional historical narrative and to explore how the more recent outbreaks of violent protest fit into historical narrative of resistance to oppression and racial injustice. In redefining what these events mean in the context of the United States’ history, it becomes clearer that large outbreaks of racial violence from the past and the causes behind them look like events and issues that American society is still confronting today.